“Most museums actually have off-site collection storage,” says Dawn Roberts, director of collections for the Chicago Academy of Sciences and the Nature Museum, and one of the facility’s two full-time staff members. “They’re too large to fit within the constraints of the proper museum.”
In the 1800s, she says, people made a hobby of understanding nature. “They were putting together collections of insects, plants, bird eggs. . . . They were getting outside and seeing different things and then having these little cabinets of curiosities, these treasure troves in their homes.”
